I am a firm believer that every writer is different. What works for you might or might not work for me. That is part of the reason I have interviews with writerly types on Get Published. If enough people tell their personal story to getting their work published, one of the stories might resonate with you. Last week I got some great advice regarding revisions. I have been struggling a bit on my current revisions and I was discussing it with another writer. He said he approaches revisions differently. He treats them as another opportunity to spend time with the characters. Time he wouldn’t ordinarily have. That made it more enjoyable for him. What I was doing wasn’t working so I […]
Read moreTag: irreverent muse
Revising Mik Murdoch: The Power Within
As you may or may not know, I’ve been working on revising Mik Murdoch: The Power Within for the past two months. It has been a much more difficult thing to do than writing the original book. That is largely because, with every change I make, I need to first think about how it will impact the book. Does the change need to have anything added earlier so it makes sense? Will it breach some sort of continuiity later? If I add this scene, will I need to dispose of another scene further on? All of these things mean that I am moving at a comparitive snails pace to how quickly I was able to write the book initially. Does […]
Read moreNot Every Antogonist Must be “Bad”
I grew up reading comic books where the villain was often evil and wanted to take over the country/world/solar system/galaxy. Pick whichever level of villain, but the evil characteristic was often the same. That negative bias for the antagonist creeps into my writing more often than I would like to admit. Usually when it does, the villain is pretty two-dimensional. Trying to add additional depth often fails because, at his or her core is a being that wrings his/her hands and has a laugh reminiscent of MWAHAHAHA! So, just as an exercise, I decided to try and create a character who is a normal, flawed person like you and me. He is friendly, intelligent and well-educated. He doesn’t have warts […]
Read morePoison Drip
I hit a milestone in my edits of Mik Murdoch: The Power Within, yesterday. I am now 1/3 finished my first round of revisions. I still like the book, but I have concerns. Yes, that’s right, I’m uncertain whether the book will live up to the first one. When I mentioned my concerns a week or so ago, it was pointed out to me that most authors go through exactly the same thing. The term used to describe the phenomenon was, Poison Drip. I will be honest, I haven’t heard that one before. I can guess at what it means though. Writers seem to have, as part of their imagination, the ability to be overly critical of their own writing. […]
Read more